Nearly 50,000 enrolment operators have been suspended for violating the process guidelines for Aadhaar enrolment till date, Rajya Sabha was informed today. An operator is blacklisted on crossing certain threshold of errors during enrolment, Minister of State for Electronics and IT, Alphons Kannanthanam said in a written reply. The erroneous enrolments are rejected during quality checks, and, as a result, Aadhaar is not generated in respect of such enrolments. Eligible enrolments, that are error-free, lead to Aadhaar generation, he added. “As on date, about 50,000 Aadhaar enrolment operators have been suspended for violating process guidelines relating to Aadhaar enrolment,” he said.

The Aadhaar Act and its regulations prescribe punitive actions for various Aadhaar-related offences. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the Aadhaar-issuing body, routinely organises training and sensitisation workshops for enrolment agencies and operators working under them on various issues of enrolment. To another query, the Minister said, that about 71.24 crore mobile numbers, 14.63 crore Permanent Account Numbers and 82 crore bank accounts have been linked with Aadhaar as on December 8, 2017.

Aadhaar, the 12-digit number backed by fingerprints, iris scans and certain demographic details of Indian residents, is today the world’s largest biometric database. The government is pushing for linking Aadhaar to a host of schemes and services such as mobile connections, PAN, and bank accounts to weed out ghost holders and check tax evasion.